The invention of the disposable razor is a celebrated marketing story. Invented by Bic, not a shaving company. The reason Bic got into this market was that they were competing with Gillette in the portable cigarette lighter business. The portable razor was a way of undermining a competitor’s profitability. I digress. My point was, innovation very often does not come from market leaders. It’s largely because they’ve developed a particular way of looking at the market.

I recently had occasion to wear makeup, while shooting a video and I looked so good I wore the stuff again the following day. Just for the hell of it. And I liked it, so there.

Men wearing makeup during the day still carries a stigma and it’s a tiny market. A GQ survey in 2005 reported that “92 percent of men would not wear makeup even if it guaranteed them a more fulfilling sex life.” OK, well there’s 8% of us who’d wear flowerpots on our heads.

I think it’s quite possible men’s makeup will become common but it needs a marketing twist unlikely to come from the big cosmetic brands.

Instead of trying to market foundation, a product as symbolically feminine as brassieres, companies should market men’s suncream with added foundation. Guys are happy buying suncream (in summer at least) and once your metrosexual 50 year old sees the difference that foundation makes, it’s down the slippery slope me old hearties.

Of course, getting a shade of foundation that matches your skin tone is critical if you don’t want your mates in the workshop to beat you to a pulp. So the sampling experience needs to be right. Here’s where I think the Internet plays a role. Men are not likely to want to be seen publicly in the cosmetics department. I think they’ll prefer to experiment at home with a sampler.

I suspect the cosmetics companies are too entrenched in the beauty paradigm to address the male market; the major sunscreen manufacturers – Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co – can own this business. As heterosexual men become older, vainer and less concerned about being labelled homosexual, this market will grow. ‘Ray for men’s liberation!

That’s not me in the photo but doesn’t he have nice eyebrows?

A brief overview of perhaps the least understood marketing concept: positioning. It’s what you need to get clear on before you start advertising.

Imagine you’re a wealthy business person and your birthday party is coming up. You’ve decided to book a comedian to perform for your friends and you can afford any performer in the world. Who do you choose? Maybe you come up with a short-list of people you think are equally funny: Billy Connolly, Woody Allen, Tina Fey and your next door neighbour, Tim, who does amateur stand-up.

I put it to you that you have a clear mental picture of where each of these people sit in the comedy landscape.

Who would you choose if your friends were mostly Jewish psychologists? Who would you choose if they were mostly people working in politics? If they were mostly blue collar workers? Each performer occupies particular mental territory in your comedic imagination. That territory is their positioning. Connolly is positioned strongly as ‘outrageous’ and ‘irreverent’; Allen ranks for ‘sophisticated’, Fey ranks for ‘sex appeal’ and ‘current affairs’.

Probably you’re unlikely to choose Tim because you recognise that in the minds of the audience he doesn’t have a profile. He hasn’t established a positioning in the market. He might be as funny as the rest, but for the important attributes of ‘famous’ or ‘credible’, he doesn’t rank.

We build up these mental pictures of where people sit in relation to everyone else – different people stand out in different areas.

Same applies to business positionings. What marketers try to do is mark out mental territory and make that territory as proprietary as possible. Because if our positioning is powerfully clear, it will jump into the mind of the consumer easily.

Some positionings are more valuable than others. A surgeon would rather be positioned highly on ‘technical expertise’ than ‘lives close by’. So choose a positioning that is meaningful to your target market.

Pick the absolute most concise positioning. If you are trying to position your widget as ‘convenient’, ‘value-for-money’ and ‘long-lasting’ you’re going to confuse the market. Be single-minded. You don’t have a $50 million budget. (And even if you did…)

In all cases we’re trying to latch onto territory that we can own. Territory that becomes identified with your brand and no-one else’s. It’s hard to own the positioning ‘quality’ if everyone in your industry says they are the best quality. And they probably do. Choose something that you can own and take into account your budget and your competitors’ budgets. You might want to own ‘convenient takeaway’ but you probably can’t match McDonalds’ budget.

Bind the positioning to your brand name so that when customers think of that positioning, they think of your brand. If you are the top-of-mind product you are likely to get the first phone call the customer makes.

Can you successfully communicate that positioning in your advertising? If you’re saying ‘better quality finish’ than your competitors’ furniture, you’d better make sure the finish looks better in your photography than theirs.

Finally, your positioning should reflect who you are as a business. If your advertising says ‘reliable’ and the customer experience is not that, you’re in trouble. If their experience with you reinforces what you’re promising, you’re unusual. People will talk about you. Otherwise you’re just another bullshit artist. I mean advertiser.

Summary
1. Choose a positioning that is majorly meaningful to your target market.
2. Make it incredibly concise. One idea. Three words. That kind of concise.
3. Make sure you can own the positioning, given your competition, your budget and your advertising message.
4. Make sure your positioning is a reflection of the experience you actually deliver.

I’m declaring December 7th the first Sales Respect Day.

Talk to any real estate salesperson. Their job involves providing valuable information to people who need to make a decision. Yet they are treated like second-class citizens. Often they are spoken down to, their correspondence is ignored and they are very seldom thanked by the prospective purchaser. They endure jibes and constant insinuations that they have lower ethics than other people.

The fact is, every profession has a mix of people who are scrupulous and people who are not. Professions like Real Estate are probably more conscious of ethical requirements than most, because they are more regulated than other professions.

I think many business people treat the sales person with disdain because they ascribe malicious intent to people who are trying to make money out of them. As if, somehow, a profit motive offsets the right to be treated with respect. It’s the same thought pattern that instilled a hatred of money-lenders when they started charging interest. People who provide you with a service should be treated with respect. Here is the quid pro quo: I’ll give you information and act ethically. You tell me honestly where I stand and treat me with respect.

One of the greatest sins against sales people is the disingenuous mining of information by a client. They intend giving the business to a particular supplier but will seek information from a range of companies to exert price pressure on the preferred supplier. A potential supplier might spend huge amounts of time and resources answering questions, educating the client or pitching ideas. But they were never going to get the business because they were too small a company. Or in the wrong location.

So here’s how you celebrate Sales Respect Day.

1. Send a thank-you note to a sales person who has given you useful information.
2. Send a thank-you note and a small gift to a sales person who has given you useful information and didn’t get the business.
3. Send a sales person honest, constructive feedback about why they missed out on the job.

And give some thought to how you treat sales people – consider the following questions:

* Are you completely up-front with sales people about how the sales decision will be made and the chances of a sale eventuating? If you have no intention of purchasing, perhaps you should pay for the information.
* Do you reply promptly to sales people or wait for them to call you six times? Do you treat others poorly because it makes you feel more important?
* Do you have ethical guidelines as to how sales people are treated in your purchasing process?
* Do you thank sales people for comprehensive proposals that have clearly taken lots of time and effort?
* Do you waste people’s time because you have no intention of buying something off them? If you intend buying something off the Net, it’s just mean to bleed some retail sales person of information.

Most of us are sales people some of the time and purchasers some of the time. Show some respect.

Here’s a (real) complaint letter written in 2001 to Nissan.

ATTENTION: MR NEVILLE GREEN, GENERAL MANAGER – NATIONAL PARTS

DEAR SIR,

I would like to bring to your attention some serious faults in Nissan Motor Co. in regard to parts availability, lead times and pricing. Currently at this mine we have a Nissan W40 civilian bus that we cannot use to transport staff to and from the mine. The reason this bus is not operational is not labour or condition related, it is because of a denial on the part of yourself and Nissan Motor Co. to adequately supply your clientele with parts. I give you the example of the following items;

Of these I tried to purchase, only 3 are available in W.A.. It stretches the bounds of credulity that items such as wheel nuts (a consumable in most of the known world) are available with a lead time of 4 days-ex east. What resoundingly snaps the bounds of credulity clean in half is that items such as brake shoes are ex Japan (6 weeks). I cannot deny the effectiveness of these components, they not only slow the bus down, they have the ability to stop it stone fucking dead for 6 weeks! I didn’t even bother enquiring availability on such complicated parts such as washers etc – the only washers in stock would be – washer? Wind fuck out of this customer and tell him it’s ex east.

On the rare occasion we have been delivered parts within an acceptable time period, they have been entirely wrong. It is not that the wrong parts are ordered, it is that some of your parts interpreters are so green I couldn’t set them on fire with petrol.

These are not isolated incidents, they occur every time we try to purchase parts, from $10.00 hoses, at $104.94 each, through to internal gearbox components that are second only to thermonuclear warheads in their capacity to annihilate all that surrounds them.

It is astounding that in this day of interstate air and road transport at least 6 times per day, you peanuts take 4 days to get a part across the country. May I suggest you stop freighting the parts with Nissan transport vehicles as the 3 week delay in Nissan’s 24 hour roadside assist is becoming too much for us to bear.

I could elaborate further on the complete frustration I feel from trying to keep this bus on the road safely; suffice to say the bus driver now has a firm belief in the afterlife and we haven’t ruled out danger money for the position.

Please don’t get me wrong; I could handle the first 35 instances of being fucked around, (the apologetic kiss from customer support was always welcome). Now that you’ve turned it into a
bizarre form of sado-masochism complete with scratching and biting, I feel I have to complain.
I look forward to discussing every single frustrating event of the past 8 months with you.

I SINCERELY HOPE YOU CUNTS NEVER BUILD PLANES

YOURS IN UTTER AMAZEMENT,

JARROD BYRNE
UNDERGROUND MAINTENANCE PLANNER
BOUNTY GOLD MINE, MT HOLLAND FORRESTANIA, WESTERN AUSTRALIA
TEL (090) 394 527 FACSIMILE (090) 394 528
NISSAN MOTOR CO (AUSTRALIA) PTY. LTD.
C/O 244 WELSHPOOL RD, WELSHPOOL W.A.6106

AND EVERY PERSON I TALK TO BETWEEN NOW AND WHEN I GET SOME SATISFACTION

(Hate to ruin a good beat-up but the expletives were apparently added by someone after the letter was sent). In the search I did there were only 19 copies of this letter on the net including the page on Snopes verifying it. This is because the letter was written in 2001 and posted on the net in 2004.

Had the letter been written this year, it would have been Tweeted, Dugg and updated on countless Facebook sites. There would have been a public response by the company.

Consumer complaints; historically a private conversation between purchaser and corporation are going public. Companies who are not tracking conversations in social media and handling them swiftly are going to wear a lot of publicity that they don’t want. Bigger companies are more alert to this change. Small and medium-sized companies will be caught in the headlights.

I was talking to the owner of a repair business recently who said customers on the phone are sometimes very aggressive when things don’t go their own way. However, when the manufacturer is also involved in the dispute, the customer becomes surprisingly submissive. The “big company” advantage is a legacy of television advertising and financial hegemony, but that advantage is being undermined.

The recent damage to corporate credibility notably in the financial and vehicle sectors, together with the increased accountability that social media invites; we’re watching a power shift in the politics of customer relations.

Phillip, I’d like to begin by saying that I think it’s very generous of you to step down as host of Late Night Live and give voice to someone with a different set of ideas. It certainly runs counter to the traditions of incumbency; what prompted you to pass the baton? … reply

2. Who should succeed you in the job and why? … reply

3. If there was a Phillip Adams Chair at a university, what would you like it to be for? … reply

Let me ask you these questions and please feel free to say something in parenthesis.

4. If you could create a new media network, how would it be different to the existing ones? … reply

5. What is missing in the Australian psyche? … reply

6. How should we decide when to listen to experts? And how do we decide which expert(s)? … reply

7. What is the role of a normal member of society? … reply

8. Can you describe your own spirituality? If you must say ‘numinous’ that’s perfectly okay. … reply

9. What comes after the materialistic society? … reply

10. How do you translate the silent head-nodding of listeners into policy change? … reply

11. How can we better facilitate agreement? … reply

12. Other than family, one person you’d like to thank and one person you’d like to apologise to … reply

13. Is the difference between left and right the best way to separate political ideals? If not, how in future do we organise and present ideas for change? … reply

14. Do you sometimes get sick of clever people? Do you ever want to tell them to shutup and go sit in the corner? … reply

15. Is our current political system something we should stick with? Do you favour experimentation with different political models? … reply

16. What new institutions do we need? … reply

17. Apart from money, should there be another currency? … reply

18. What’s with Bea Campbell’s voice? Does it explain how we feel about the English? … reply

19. If there is no deity with a ‘grand plan’, we each get to make one up. What’s yours? … reply

Thanks Phillip; we could talk about this all night but unfortunately we’re going to have to wrap it. I commend your contributions to the listener and I ask you, Gladys, to be upstanding. A round of applause and a big koala stamp for Australia’s greatest living intellectual, the Unspeakable Phillip Adams.

Commenters are welcome to step in on Phillip’s behalf.

I’m going to speculate here that Google Wave is going to make social media even more important in web site search engine rankings. Let’s assume Google implement Wave in more or less its current form. I see four SEO benefits for social media practitioners.

As you know, comments on your blog lead to traffic and in some cases back-links which pass PageRank. In other words, they help your Google ranking.

Sometimes people comment about my blog posts in Twitter or Facebook. Which is less useful from an SEO viewpoint than commenting directly on my blog. With Wave you’ll be able to re-direct comments made on your Facebook profile to your blog. You’ll probably be able to search for and drag in Twitter threads as well. So if you have a well developed social network and a web site you’ll see an increase in your comments. Where comments are relevant to what you’re writing about, all things equal, your search engine ranking should increase relative to people who don’t use those networks. That’s benefit #1: more commenting.

It’s also the case that the more often you post the more regularly you get indexed. Which leads to higher ranking.

Successfully implemented, (and I think that’s what’s going to happen) Wave will break down the barrier between email and web applications. Your emails will become more like threaded IM conversations and you’ll be able to suck them across to your web site as content. Conventional businesses will not allow instant publishing, but once again the social media junkies will ride the wild tiger. Their email/IM conversations and their conversations on social networking sites will become easily publishable content on their blogs. Benefit #2: more content.

The logical consequence of Wave technology is that social media networks will spawn web sites with multiple authors (multiblogs). In other words a new and very fast way of creating web content, which of course can link back to the site you’re promoting. Benefit #3: link-building.

The ‘federation’ aspect of Wave gives you the ability to aggregate contacts from your different social networks. This will lead to social network expansion and benefit #4: more followers.

If you’re a black hat SEO, you have already started working out how to manipulating Waves for Search Engine Optimisation purposes. If you’re a white hat, you’ve got six months to help your clients build the size and quality of their social networks.

I wrote an uninformed blog post after reading articles reviewing Google Wave. I’ve deleted it. Herewith, I hope, a more sensible post written after viewing the Google Wave video that was shown to developers. Although the articles I read were well written I got no sense of the likely paradigm shift until I saw the video.

The lessons are:

1. Video communication is much more powerful than a good review.
2. Watch the video if you want to understand this technology.
3. Bret is a schmuck.

So Wave is an exciting technology and it will profoundly affect web communication.

It’s a new communication platform that simply and elegantly integrates email, IM and applications. But there are four significant technology shifts in the way that it works.

The organisational concepts for Waves are intuitive. Lots of stuff just happens, lots of drag and drop and lots of search functionality.

Wave won’t be live until later in the year, but developers already have access to code and the APIs. So what’s it good for? It’s an improvement in collaborative work applications and has the capacity to seriously knock around Sharepoint. It is the first improvement on MS Outlook partly because it breaks down the barrier between email and web browser. And it looks like everyone’s desktop in 2010.

Just been reading Thom Kennon and find myself in complete agreement with him.

He talks about looking for info on Google’s recent changes to trademark policy. “I first searched in Google for ‘google trademark’ and came up with a mix of old or irrelevant algo results on page one, first timely results below the fold. So I turned to Twitter and searched ‘#google trademark’ and voila — nothing but timely results with a wealth of links back to rich, hot-off-the-presses and diverse content.”

This is exactly Twitter’s strength.

Twitter has become a real-time search engine populated with human-reviewed web links (as opposed to Google which uses non-human search indexing). For contemporary matters, Twitter often produces much better results than Google.

It amazes me that Biz Stone has publicly stated Twitter will not pursue an advertising model (eg. AdWords). That is the PROVEN BUSINESS MODEL you THICKHEAD! See all that screen real estate you’re not using on a Twitter page?? That’s what it’s for! To make you MONEY. Sheesh.

Although they were bright enough to buy the leading Twitter search engine (Summize), Twitter have completely missed the boat in the way they’ve integrating it on the home page. It’s a key feature but has been buried.

Google had better hope that no-one smart buys Twitter. Despite what you might read elsewhere, it’s Google’s only serious challenger.

Went to Sexpo and met Fiona Patten, the Convenor of the Australian Sex Party. I think this is going to be successful and influential. Set up by the Eros Foundation, the sex industry lobby group, it’s attracting the support of commercial operators within the sex industry. That means they’ll have a physical distribution channel through which they can promote membership. I gave Fiona my unsolicited opinion (people love that) – I think their strategic focus should be on gaining members. This is because the mainstream parties actually have very low membership numbers. If the Sex Party get to the point where membership numbers match either of the major parties, they will legitimise themselves in people’s minds. Nobody wants to vote for a party that nobody votes for.

Their web site is already attracting 35,000 uniques a week after just six months and they are more pro-social media than the rest. Okay that’s not difficult. Join the Facebook group here.

They also need to establish in people’s minds that what they’re chasing is some representation and balance in the Parliament. Not a take-over. They need to present themselves as reasonable and normal people and they probably should consider knocking off some of the hard edges on their policies, which are pretty strongly anti-religious. That won’t help.

I wish to point out that I’ve written about this without a double entendre which seems to be beyond most media folk.

Two products at Sexpo I thought were interesting. Sportsheets are a clever product. Restrain your partner using velcro pads that adhere to the sheets. So much easier than those infernal ropes.

Party High Pills is a new business selling herbal euphorics manufactured in Hamilton Hill (in a state of the art garage?) from ingredients sourced from New Zealand and Israel. Good quality presentation; they’ve done an excellent job. Although the danger levels are almost certainly lower compared with Ecstacy and amphetamines I think they’d be wise to amp up the reassurance on their web site about toxicity testing. I’m sure there’s a substantial market there so at some point, someone needs to fund a clinical trial. Meanwhile, will instigate individual sampling for purely research purposes.

The failure of Great Southern and their competitor Timbercorp will be mourned only by their investors and their greedy financial brokers. The Managed Investment Schemes (MIS) were a blight; an awful piece of government policy that fueled uneconomic plantings and helped tip the winegrape industry into chronic oversupply.

The artificiality of a scheme offering tax advantages unavailable elsewhere was always going to cause problems Everyone in the agriculture industry knows that a return on investment of 20%+ is extraordinary in these times. Yet MIS schemes were in the market projecting 25% plus for investors. Overlay substantial management fees, extravagant in some cases and ridiculous commissions for financial brokers; it just did not stack up. The Australian today covered the increases in executive salaries months before the collapse. I am so surprised.

Investors were either completely taken in or were 100% in it for the tax benefit. Why was the government in such a hurry to hasten plantings? They just distorted the economics of the agricultural industry and handed huge sums of money to rapacious and unscrupulous entrepreneurs. Who lobbied the government to implement these tax breaks? Now that these ill-conceived schemes have been exposed, there should be a parliamentary inquiry into how this all came about.

Pictured are John Young, who ‘earned’ a $2 million retirement bonus from the company last year, and Peter Mansell, a Great Southern non-executive director and former Chairman of West Australian Newspapers.